There is no state more Western than Wyoming. When Hollywood Western legend John Wayne came to Casper in 1968 to shoot a segment on a movie, he instantly became the hottest attraction in the oil city since the first moving picture was shown in 1910.

Ironically, the movie The Duke was filming wasn’t a Western. “Hellfighters” was a modern action film that revolved around a group of elite hotshots fighting fires on oil rigs.

Even more than half a century later, local residents can still remember how John Wayne came to Casper, escaped injury behind the camera, and celebrated a birthday party.

Headlines in the Casper Star-Tribune in May 1968 prepared the city for John Wayne’s arrival to shoot part of Universal Studio’s $5 million “Hellfighters,” even though the film was set in Venezuela.

The film was loosely based on the famous firefighter Red Adair and starred Wayne as “Chance Buckman”. Much of the film was shot in Texas and the remaining third in Wyoming. Adair served as a consultant on the film.

“Tonight, beginning at 8 p.m. — winds permitting — filming of the Casper sequence of ‘Hellfighters’ will begin at a ranch southwest of Casper,” the Casper Star-Tribune reported on Monday, May 13, 1968. “Superstar John Wayne is not expected in Casper until Monday afternoon and is not on call for tonight’s scenes but is expected to be on the set.”

At location

The ranch was called Speas Ranch, southwest of Casper.

Susan Hunter, who now lives on the ranch, said her grandparents, William and Margaret Rae, owned the ranch at the time of the filming. She was in college.

“We didn’t live in Wyoming at the time, but my parents came over for vacation and they were here when they were filming,” she said. “I think John Wayne was pretty nice. He came over and had coffee with my grandparents and some of the other actors and actresses, Jim Hutton and Katherine Ross.”

Billy Snodgrass, a former veteran of the Iditarod sled dog race, of Dubois whose family owned a nearby ranch, said he was a teenager at the time and he and a friend rode their ponies out to watch the filming.

There were also hundreds of people who parked along Highway 220 during part of the filming to catch a glimpse of the activities, which included the setting on fire of five drilling rigs specially built for the film.

Lots of fire

Universal Pictures brought a special effects man named Fred Noth out of retirement to make the film, the Casper Star-Tribune reported. More than 20 special effects experts worked to recreate authentic-looking oil rig fires.

To meet the script’s requirements, which called for five drilling rigs to be on fire simultaneously, the special effects team installed 3,800 feet of 4-inch pipe for diesel fuel, 2,800 feet of 2-inch pipe for propane, and 2,200 feet of 3/4-inch pipe for pilot lights.

Expensive valves controlled the flow of fuel to the five burning wells. The set could hold 121,000 barrels of diesel fuel and 27,000 barrels of propane.

On the first day of shooting, initially scheduled for May 13, the script called for a large fire on the Venezuelan oil field and “by the light it (the fire) casts” viewers will see other drilling rigs.

The field was in a valley and there was a group of Quonset-type buildings that represented field offices. Guerrillas would come running in jeeps, throwing explosives and being pursued by troops in trucks shooting at them. One jeep would be destroyed.

After the attack, five oil wells were on fire.

Snodgrass said the scenes surrounding the fire were spectacular.

“Boy, it lit up the whole mountain. They burned those things down. They threw so much fuel under them and set them on fire that it just melted those rigs,” he said. “It was awesome stuff. There were lines of cars on the highway to Alcova to watch those things burn down.”

Snodgrass, who lived on Goose Egg Ranch, said his family rented a piece of land from the Speas Ranch and had cows all around it. Actors would ride across their property in buses to get to the shooting location. He recalls one day a bus hit one of the calves.

“They felt so bad,” he said. “The whole entourage came out of the bus and all the actors came in a procession to the house and apologized, they wanted to pay for the calf.”

Snodgrass said they would ride their ponies to the film set with a young friend to watch the filming.

‘I even got to throw the football with the Duke’

“I actually got to throw the football with The Duke one time,” he said. “He was on recess and he kind of got a kick out of us kids, so we were throwing the football back and forth, and it was pretty fun.”

During the shooting, Snodgrass also remembers a birthday party being thrown for Wayne, who was born on May 26, 1907. That would have been his 61st birthday.

Snodgrass and his buddy decided to contribute and went to a nearby spring where they knew there were trout. They caught a few with their bare hands and brought them to Wayne as a gift.

“He thought that was a big deal, so he gave us a little Hellfighter figure that was on his birthday cake,” Snodgrass said. “I still have it, I think.”

In addition to Wayne, Hutton and Ross, the cast included Vera Miles, Jay Flippen, Bruce Cabot, Edward Faulkner and Barbara Stuart.

Faulkner and Wayne spent some of their free time playing chess in a small hut on the set. Snodgrass said there was a hole in the floor where one of them… He thinks Wayne would spit tobacco juice out of there.

During one of the Venezuelan guerrilla and army scenes involving jeeps and fighting, Snodgrass said he and his friend rode their ponies among the rocks and crept toward where the action was taking place.

“Because they saw us coming, they thought they could play a joke on us and they shot at us with those automatic machine guns, and we ran off to our ponies, and I’m sure they thought that was great,” he said.

Near disaster

The Casper Star-Tribune reported on May 24, 1968, that Wayne and his makeup artist David Grayson were in his dressing truck when it was hit by a catering truck.

“He slid through the mud and fell into the dressing wagon, breaking several windows,” the newspaper reported. “Wayne and Grayson jumped out, shaken but unhurt.”

After filming, Hunter said the crew left a lot of equipment for the set with her grandfather that he repurposed elsewhere on the ranch. She said they installed two cattle gates for their entrance to the set, which are still in use today.

“There are still some remains of the site where they filmed and we find things every now and then,” she said.

Hunter said she still talks to people parked along the road outside the ranch.

“That was a big event,” she said.

Snodgrass said that a large water reservoir was set up during filming and that the studio had made a raft out of six 50-gallon barrels that served a specific purpose. They gave it to his family after filming.

“And for years we took it and dragged it to our reservoirs. Us kids just floated around for years on the raft they gave us,” he said.

A story to tell

Snodgrass recalls that years later he was sailing in the South Pacific with friends and one night he got together with 20 or 30 sailors from other boats.

The topic of conversation was, “Have you ever met a celebrity and told them your story?” he said.

“So I was with some friends and I got to tell the story of how, yeah, I met someone,” he said. “I met John Wayne, who made a movie about our ranch. So that was a fun time to be able to tell the story.”

In addition to the ranch scenes, a scene was filmed where Wayne flies into a South American airport, at what is now Barr Nunn and the old Wardwell airfield. Another scene where Jim Hutton picks up Katherine Ross at an airport was filmed at Jackson Hole Airport.

On December 20, 1968, the film was shown especially for local extras at the America Theater on South Center Street in Casper. The official premiere was in Houston, Texas.

The film received mixed reviews upon its release. Snodgrass said he continues to watch the film “every time it comes on TV.”

“There was even a scene where they showed a shot of one of our hayfields and our cows and everything,” he said. “I thought it was cool that our ranch got to be in the movie.”

Contact Dale Killingbeck at [email protected]

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at [email protected].